Birmingham Public Library to Host Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of Central Alabama for BPL@Night

Thursday, August 20, 2009 in the Central Atrium

July 30, 2009, Birmingham, AL— The Birmingham Public Library is excited to host the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of Central Alabama. MYOCA is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization which was founded to awaken and nurture a passion for music in children. Students of diverse racial, social, cultural, and economic backgrounds are encouraged to explore and cultivate their musical talent and contribute to Alabama's musical culture. The organization’s goal is to make music instruction and ensemble playing available to all, thereby developing character and sense of community.

The orchestra finds its roots from a similarly-conceived group in Venezuela, El Sistema.
CBS featured this groundbreaking concept on 60 Minutes. The segment captured how children's mental processes change when they learn to make music. Studies of students in the El Sistema music program have shown them to have "marked improvements in academic performance, self-esteem, leadership qualities, and social integration". The founder of El Sistema, Jose Abreu, says that when a student "generates musical harmony, (he) begins to understand from within what essential harmony is...human harmony." And he says that an orchestra "is a community where the essential and exclusive feature is that it is the only community that comes together with the fundamental objective of agreeing with itself."

For more information on the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of Central Alabama, please visit www.myorch.org. For more information on the BPL@Night or the other BPL programs, please visit www.blponline.org.